Caló: A Borderland Dialect
Caló is the latest addition to Marfa Public Radio's programming. Created by Oscar Rodriguez, who sometimes goes by the name "El Marfa," the series honors the Texas borderlands patois commonly called Caló.
Oscar grew up speaking this language in Ojinaga and Odessa. He remembers the unique dialect filling the barrios and countryside of his childhood in West Texas. Each week on Caló, Oscar will feature words and phrases from Caló then explore their meaning with a personal anecdote.
Oscar was born and raised in Ojinaga, West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico. He has lived in and out of Texas since he graduated from Ector High School in Odessa in the late-1970s, including a couple of years in the 1990s when he lived in Marfa and taught at Sul Ross State University. Oscar is also an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Tribe and an avid researcher of Native history in Texas and New Mexico — specifically in the La Junta region.
He hopes by sharing his knowledge of this colorful language, he can help keep it alive.
Latest Episodes
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Órale, this is the first episode of a series focused on dance words and phrases. Out featured word today: chanclear. It comes from the Spanish word chancla, which means slip-on or slide-in sandal. There are no synonyms for chanclear. -
Órale, this is the last episode of the series focused on the Iberian Romaní Caló words that also circulate in Rio Grande Caló. And today we've got a surprise: lollipop. Candy on a stick. Everybody who knows Caló knows that’s what it means. But it originally comes from the Romaní specialty of candied apples, ayí poba. Of course, it’s a powerful image that allows for a wide spectrum of metaphors. In Rio Grande Caló it's used to reference everything from a hot love to a false promise—but not likely a candied or sugared apple on a stick.
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The headline of this episode is a well-known word: calcos. To be sure, along the Río Grande, calcos is a general term. Work shoes and dance shoes are calcos, but not boots or chanclas. Of course, when you dance in calcos you are actually chancleando, but that’s another episode.
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Órale, this episode’s feature is about a very notorious word in Caló, pinche. It’s very misused, to the point that many people think it’s a curse word, as it’s often used in concert with curse words. Pinche itself isn’t a curse word, however. In both Iberian Romani and Rio Grande Caló, it merely means notorious, well-known, undeniable. When it’s used in conjunction with a curse word, the purpose of pinche is to aggrandize the curse, as in that pinche one-eyed truck wouldn’t start or el pinche show-off is at it again.
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Órale, we’re going to continue focusing on words that come from the Romaní of Spain, Portugal, France and Latin America. This episode’s feature is chalado. It means to be crazy in both Iberian Romani and Rio Grande Caló. Chalado is both an adjective and a noun. So you can be chalado and a chalado. No problem liking or even befriending a chalado. But you better be en garde should you find yourself navigating a complex or delicate situation with them in the picture. That quirk could lead to a bad result if you’re not careful.
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The featured word for this episode of Caló is sobar. In modern Spanish it means to kneed or massage. Among Caló-speakers along the Rio Grande, sobar is a medical procedure, where a sobador or sobadora massages key muscles on a patient to make either the patient or the muscles go to sleep, depending on whether the ailment is mental, spiritual, or physical.
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Órale, today’s featured word is chundo. It means a dodgy, untrustworthy, undesirable person in Caló. There’s no word close to it in either Spanish or English. This word comes from the Romani word, chungo, which stands for anything or any situation, as well as a person, that’s sketchy or nasty. Well-known modern-day chundos are the trolls who delight in being rude and unsocial in public forums.
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Today’s featured Caló word is cruda. It means hangover. A common Indo-European word, it’s the feminine term for crude — unrefined, and raw. The biggest influence on how this word is used in Caló today is likely the Kaló spoken in Spain, Portugal and Latin America among the Romani. Their lexicon includes a very similar-sounding and related word, curda, which means drunkeness. In Caló, cruda is simply the next state one enters after being drunk. It’s also used as an adjective, as in, she’s quite cruda after drinking bad wine last night.
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Órale, today’s featured word is muino. It means to be fidgety or restless. The general idea that’s communicated when it’s said that somebody is muino is that of a teething inconsolable child with itchy, achy gums. The word comes from Iberian Romani’s word for mouth, muí. Of course, muino can also refer to unsettled adults and adolescent children, not just babies who are teething. An agitated adult can be as muino as a child whose teeth are coming in.
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Today’s featured word, catear, comes directly and unchanged from the Kaló spoken by the Iberian Romani. In Rio Grande Caló, catear means to hit or beat up. It comes from the Kalé word for the same, cate. In modern Spanish, catear means to search. Did this word, like many Iberian Kaló words, come into Rio Grande Caló directly from the Romaní who migrated to the Americas, or did it first come into Spanish and brought to the Americas by the Spanish colonists? Either way, it’s in Caló now.
